Tzero latest ultrawideband firm to shutter

UWB technology suffers its latest blow with the reported shutdown of Tzero …

Another ultrawideband (UWB) firm has ceased current operations, according to reports confirmed by the company. Tzero Technologies has entered what the company termed a "financial reorganization" despite receiving an infusion of $19 million in funds last March.

UWB is a high-speed, short-range technology that has failed to live up to its early potential. Tzero's focus was split between personal area networking and streaming high-definition video. For wireless HD, the company developed a system that could push 80 to 100Mbps of H.264-compressed video at distances of up to 100 feet, it said.

The promise of UWB was to provide an inexpensive, low-power, and non-interferring method of building small ecosystems of peripherals and mobile devices, mainly for use in home entertainment setups. UWB rates were promised to hit 480Mbps at up to 10 feet, with over 300Mbps of throughput. Throughput drops rapidly at greater removes, however.

Over the last few months, several UWB firms have gone out of business, including WiQuest and Focus Enhancements; another UWB firm oriented around software applications merged into Staccato; and Intel dropped its long-running internal efforts to create UWB chips. Alereon and Wisair remain in business, focused on networking rather than consumer electronics.

Despite demonstrating its video technology over the last two years, Tzero had only a single announced partnership, with Hitachi. Competing efforts for streaming video wirelessly from Amimon (using the 5GHz band) and SiBeam (using millimeter-wave signals at 60GHz) have collected many major consumer electronics partners, in contrast.

EE Timesreported Thursday on the company halting its operations, although the firm isn't technically shutting down. The firm's spokesman provided an official statement that the firm would "support ongoing business," and that Tzero "looks forward to working with [its customers] in the future."